b – speaking about fear… I am worried about the last two comments on the protocols of Sion (in my Iraqi oil thread). I think we should delete them altogether, as they are highly inappropriate – and probably illegal under French or German law.
Posted by: Jérôme | Feb 13 2005 9:36 utc | 1
@Jérôme
I think those comments are inappropriate and false, but who am I to judge. Can free speech be illegal? We should argue against such opinion, or ignore it, but I do not aggree on suppressing it.
In Germany right now a few rightist managed to get some seats in a state parliament and everybody is screaming about the need of new laws to suppress them. We should be careful about such things. These very laws could and would be used to also suppress my right of free speach.
Any neofascist public demonstration in the last ten years has been meet with a counterdemonstration at least triple the size of the fascist one. Any such group in a local parliament has demasked itself in a short time and was kicked out in the next election. No need to worry. The same way I do not worry about some commentators going for wingnut conspiration theories.
Regarding the loose use of the term bankruptcy by the President when he talks about future Social Security shortfalls, the amounts being discussed are very manageable and could be addressed relatively easily by dramatically decreasing war spending (over $200b on an unnecessary war in Iraq, for example), and reducing the overall federal debt gradually so that we save a lot of interest payments. Not really a crisis, more like a choice.
Posted by: maxcrat | Feb 13 2005 14:56 utc | 3
There’s a review of the book that claims Lincoln was homosexual in today’s Washington Post:
Tripp is extremely selective in his use of evidence. He relies heavily upon the research of William Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner and biographer, who conducted countless interviews with friends and associates of Lincoln and tried to present the human side of the martyred saint. When Herndon is useful to Tripp, the latter cites him approvingly. But Tripp pays no heed to Herndon when Lincoln’s old friend fails to buttress Tripp’s case. After all, how could Herndon have failed to observe Lincoln’s homosexuality, either through his research or personally? … Tripp explains this away by concluding that Herndon was afflicted with “heterosexual bias” stemming from his idyllic marriage. But Herndon was not silent on the subject of Lincoln’s sexuality; many of Herndon’s interview subjects told of Lincoln’s “strong passions” for women, and one reported that only Lincoln’s “Conscience Kept him from seduction.” This contradictory evidence appears in Burlingame’s dissent; Tripp ignores it entirely.
Posted by: mistah charley | Feb 13 2005 16:56 utc | 4
Jerome wrote:
b – speaking about fear… I am worried about the last two comments on the protocols of Sion (in my Iraqi oil thread). I think we should delete them altogether, as they are highly inappropriate – and probably illegal under French or German law.
As I don’t know exactly which comments J is reffering to (time of perusing, etc.) I presume he is upset about the posts recommending their reading, and not those describing them as fakes.
name posted:
still, for those incorregibly curious about motivations which are irrelevant, i can only recommend you read the “protocols of the learned elders of zion” to gain an overview of the current turmoil. the mere posession of this piece of work was punishable by death in the soviet union, and that is why it made it onto my reading list.
mistah charley made the point that documents that are fakes can be very important, take on their own reality – as any consideration of say the fake Nigeria yellow-cake docs. will show.
For the life of me, I can’t see what is wrong with any of these posts, but then perhaps the offensive posts were deleted before I read the thread?
Please, let’s not allow Soviet style censorship. (Banning is death!) Please, let’s not delete anything that refers to documents or opinions that could be qualified as ‘anti-Semitic’. Most or many (?) of the posters here are for free speech and against censorship (as far as I can see), and unhappy that nutty academics should be hounded for criticism of the US or Israel in some form (e.g comparing WTC workers to little Eichmans.)
I am not knowlegeable of the details of French and German law, but all such laws condemn *public* calls to hate and violent action. Repressing reference to existing documents is not covered. Ask any librarian! Who will rant till you go home exhausted and convinced.
Maybe I have got this all wrong …anyway please delete my post if it is considered irrelevant, outdated, misguided….
Posted by: Blackie | Feb 13 2005 18:10 utc | 5
@Blackie – no comment was ever deleted on MoA except three obvious sex spams and one comment after the author asked for its deletion.
Your post is neither irrelevant, nor outdated nor misguided. Thanks for your opinion.
ok. thx.
—-
The pretense of loving liberty:
Who cares if Lincoln was gay or not? Where is the relevance?
Those were different days. Homosexuality was ostensibly disaproved of by society (upper class, specially, cos they knew all about it..) but people were very free and most were uninterested or unaware of what went on in beds, or just gossiped about it, the way they do today, or made love in secret, the way they do today. State repression was far removed, and State acceptance was not dreamt of, as it was moreover fundamentally uninteresting and irrelevant. It was all any old way.
Lincoln was of his time, if in the last quote in Billmon’s post he seems to make a difference between Negros (not equal) and other groups (not to be discriminated against), it is hardly surprising.
Posted by: Blackie | Feb 13 2005 19:04 utc | 7
blackie, I do not understand the lincoln quote in question as saying that he agrees with the constitution’s assignment of inequality to negros – just that he’s saying that if things get even worse he’d prefer to emigrate to somewhere less hypocritical
Posted by: mistah charley | Feb 13 2005 23:12 utc | 8
william herndon was instrumental in generating the lincoln myth. here’s a twisted example. in reality, while not the well-known cold-blooded indian killer that his uncle mordecai was, young abe, “with an eagerness for the fray that would have made his uncle mordecai proud,” “enlisted ‘at the first tap of the drum'” & served in general zachary taylor’s massacre of some 300 Sac and Fox men, women & children on the bad axe river. (note: “it was in this ‘battle’ that one of the soldiers, John House, found, near the bank, an infant tied to a piece of cottonwood bark, deliberately shot the baby, and delivered himself of the immortal words:’kill the nits, and you’ll have no lice'”[source – richard drinnon, facing west: the metaphysics of indian and empire building]). some thirty years later, honest abe was able to exterminate 38 more native americans, this time Santee Dakotas, in the largest public mass execution in american history. also of interest & taking place concurrently w/ lincoln’s “indian policy” for obtaining more land for the white settlers, were his wacky schemes for ridding the united states of “Negros”.
Posted by: b real | Feb 14 2005 6:03 utc | 9
Yes mistah charley, I also saw in the Lincoln quote what you said, as a possible… I am not familiar enough with Lincoln / US history to dope out what he really meant, what underlying attitudes it was based on – my comment was the general: — take the ‘historical context’ into account kind ‘a guff ! — b real just above adds …
Posted by: Blackie | Feb 15 2005 19:34 utc | 10
Blackie & Mistah Charlie– Billmon misquotes Lincoln’s letter to Speed by leaving out some words (no doubt inadvertently). The more complete text makes clear that Lincoln was disgusted by the exclusion of African-Americans from equality (the “Know-Nothings” was an insulting name for the American Party, a nativist political party):
“Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid… As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some other country where they make no pretense of loving liberty… where despotism can be taken pure, without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
Posted by: jr | Feb 15 2005 23:37 utc | 11